Autumn on Mars
A science fiction novelette by Matthew Crane.
A Modern Odyssey, Chapter 5: The Low Road
I think the hardest part of the journey had to be when we got to the Blackshear desert. Cool name. I have no idea what it’s named after, and I don’t think the people who named it had actually seen the colour of the dust in it when they named it, but I like it.
This was while we were driving the 3rd leg of the journey, about half an hour after lunch. We started slowing down. The needle in the speedometer kept on going down sneakily and slowly. I knew something was wrong, it just took me a little time to figure out what.
“Mika” I said, “we’re slowing down”
She looked up
“That’s not good” she smiled, “It could be something going wrong in the power plant”
“Yes that’s… wait… no. I’ve been staring at that thing forever, and we’re not losing Amps. It’s been at… There’s more of them?” I said, surprised that I hadn’t noticed it.
“Well that’s strange, are we…”
“It’s not the volts”
“That’s good. If it were the voltage going down and it was going down quick enough for you to notice, things would be bad”
“No duh”
I’m not a complete airhead.
“What I wanted to ask is if we’re going up a hill”
“The Ball says we’re tilted down a little. That’s weird…”
“So that means it’s not because of what’s on the outside” she concluded.
With that I looked over the view screens just to check there wasn’t anything going on outside. It was the same dusty terrain we’d always been on.
“Wait” I exclaimed, “It is!”
“It is?”
“I think I can remember something”
It was about 2 years ago. Dad had been given a month out, just for us to spend together, and we went along with a cargo hopper to Nelemy Range.
Nelemy Range, if you don’t know, is where they land all of the new stuff that SC Mars has shipped out here. It’s supposed to be where they land stuff to test it, but it’s this whole city now and that’s great. It’s still a testing range though and back then I just spent ages outside watching them kick up dust in the new rovers they’d brought in. I didn’t see anything up close, because fences always have to get in my way, but seeing those big ass dust plumes far away stuck in my head. I was young, and I was stupid, so back then I thought that meant that they were going super fast, but it’s really because we live on a volcano and the ground, it’s mostly solid.
“It’s the dust!” I said, triumphantly
“Oh, ok?” Mika nodded. (she’s very frustrating like this sometimes)
“Yeah! Our rover is a mountain rover, That out there is dust. That’s not good.”
“Huh” that look flashed across her face, “Two brave explorers, out beyond society. But are they prepared to clean… Their Motors.”
“Good idea” I smiled, “but that would be too easy. It’s more about the tyres”
Mika sat, expectantly quiet. I sighed.
“The tyres are made for driving on mountains. This is dust. They’re just spinning out there, doing… nothing.”
“That makes sense” she nodded and reached for her tablet, “maybe there’s a way around it?”
“15km 900m North it looks like the valley of sand gets to the thinnest bit” Mika said.
“That’s ages away!”
“We could also go across it here and it’s only 5km to the other side”
“That’s great. But we might not keep going.”
“That would be too much dust?”
“I don’t know” I admitted, “I don’t know, we could start sinking now… Can that happen”
“I-I don’t know” Mika replied.
So, I could either waste our time or risk our lives. Safe, responsible, or me.